


A Goddamn Angel

by almina



Category: Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 20:55:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12690081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almina/pseuds/almina
Summary: After the war, getting on with their lives, Hacksaw veterans remember Doss





	A Goddamn Angel

You know what knocked me out me about those reunions? The guys were so clean! I remember them as they were on Hacksaw,covered with dirt and caked blood and looking stunned with what my boy calls the thousand yard stare. 

Sean said our reunion tonight could not be a surprise. Six of the guys from B Company found themselves in a Manhattan bar because it was in the same hotel as the prosthetics convention, and a lot of the guys who'd survived Hacksaw had a personal interest that industy. Smitty showed up to check out what today we call barrier free design, meaning you can get around a house in your wheel chair without getting stuck in a too tight doorway. His company built houses and sold a lot of them to veterans. Veterans who had left limbs and sanity on some island in the Pacific, or at Kasserine Pass or Anzio. I like bars for the atmosphere and because it was there I learned how to distance myself from the pain in my ankle stump. Bourbon beats pain meds every time.

Sean raised his glass.

"To Desmond," and the rest of the guys echoed in unison. "To Desmond."

Sean said more quietly, "to dear Desmond," and Bernie, a Pacific War vet - but not one of guys who went up Hacksaw, said,"You sweet on him?"

Sean nodded, " Regarding Desmond Doss my feelings and thoughts go far beyond sweet on him." 

Back in the late fifties that comment was a shocker. If people thought you were gay, it meant a busted career and social ostracism. Sean was handing everyone a reason to think that of him. I glanced around the table. Most of the guys were shocked. Smitty wasn't. A look crossed his face. Pain? Jealousy? Dave was unsurprised, and accepting. Dave had lost both legs on Hacksaw and he told me last time we ran into each other that Doss saved him, not only from the Japanese, but from Americans who wrote him off, who would have given him morphine and left him to die on Hacksaw. Desmond had hit him with morphine, picked him up and carried him to the escarpment then yelled at a soldier to let him down to safety. Yelled! Doss! Who would have thought he had it in him? But Dave was let down the escarpment, taken to the hospital tent and sewn up. He went home and now he could not be happier, what with his prosthetics company doing well, his wife, his kids, another on the way, thank you. You'd expect him to be bitter, messed up as he was, but he had a relaxed, kindly, at peace with himself manner.

"I see that yanked your chain," Sean said. He sipped his Scotch and glanced at us. He was a good looking, make that a great looking guy. If you didn't know he taught math at Carnegie Mellon, you'd think movie star in the making. The waitresses gave him looks and spent a lot of time standing close to him as they took his orders, never mind his wedding ring.

"Here's what I have been thinking about our Desmond. Anyone consider how strange it is that he got off Hacksaw alive after everyone who could cleared out? Even dead bodies up there were getting shot and reshot. Think about the odds."

Sean's comment called up images we didn't want in our heads. I saw others react as I did. They took long swallows and looked around for someone to bring them more..

"Bullets flying everywhere, sometimes more, sometimes less, but unless you had cover you would be hit. No cover, not a chance except for the times our guys were firing a metal storm back."

Desmond didn't have cover. Think about it. Out in the field of fire, exposed, finding the wounded, taking them to the escarpment, he should have been shot many times over. I don't mean to sound like I am talking to my students, but at what point do you people suspect that there was something tilting the odds for Desmond? 

Sean would think about the odds. He taught math, so reckoning probabilities was all in a day's work for him.

Yeah it was weird that Doss lived through that. I saw a crow shot out of the sky that first assault, an explosion of feathers and guts. Poor bird was just checking out all the fresh meat on Hacksaw, like they go for road kill here.

Smitty leaned forward, rapt, the only one of us who wasn't drinking. He always paid close attention when Desmond was the subject of conversation. Sean kept on, 

"Something else about Doss. The way he saved me. My wound was not so awful, a scalp laceration but the concussion was bad enough that a medic thought I was gone and put me on the dead pile."

The pile was the stacked dead bodies and body parts ready to be tagged and buried. The dead had to wait until the living were safe. The pile looked like stacked logs, with a covering of dirt keep the smell down, to keep the flies and crows off. Glover told me he saw Doss go to the heap and pull me out. Glover thought Doss was being Doss, a little weird, always different. Somehow Desmond could see that under the dirt I was alive. I came to in the hospital tent. Glover came by and told me what Desmond had done. Just looked at the dead pile and saw what no one else did. I wasn't scared until Glover told me that. I could have been buried alive were it not for Desmond. Desmond. He lowered Japs down the cliff face to get them help. He wouldn't even step on one of those damn rats. He is life.

Desmond finds God in his Bible. I find God in statistics. Des shouldn't have lived through Hacksaw after we evacuated. It's shit simple You walk out in the rain with a certain droplet density, say x droplets per square foot. You get wet. It's a certainty. Walk out in the density of live fire on Hacksaw, you get dead. 5000 Japanese, 2500 Americans. But Doss lives. And the guys he hauled to the escarpment lived. Just to be near Desmond conferred protection. He shouldn't have been able to tell I was still alive, but he did." 

At that point Bernie, the guy who asked if Sean was sweet on Doss, got it. 

"He is an angel, a God damn angel, that's how."

Bernie had crossed the line from tight to drunk. So had I, but stone sober I would have agreed with him that Doss was an angel. Some people exist to protect life and nurture it. My great grand papa fought under Longstreet in the war between the states. At Marye's Heights, there was this soldier who heard the wounded crying out and went to give them water though he was warned that he could be shot down if he took a step over the wall.. He could not hold back from helping them, federals and rebels alike. Grandpapa said they called that soldier the angel of Marye's Heights. He thought it was just a figure of speech. Granpapa didn't hold much with churchy types; he saw too many guys steeped in old time religion who found their true vocation only when they took up the rifle. 

"Angels spend time with us sometimes," Sean said, echoing my thoughts. "There's more. I visited Desmond two years ago. I hated myself for what I had allowed back in the barracks tent, when those guys clobbered him every night. Since Desmond did not rat them out, I won't. I could have stopped them from pounding him even though the brass were trying to drive him out of the unit. " 

No one gave Sean an argument on that point. He was a tall muscular guy, powerful and he looked it. Even now, he is,as my grand kids would say, the last person you want to fuck with. The guys who pulled Desmond out of bed to beat him, well they acted tough with skinny five foot eight inch Doss, but Sean would have made short work of all of them. It stayed with Sean how he had failed Desmond. 

Sean was looking into the middle distance.

"Else and I were in Las Vegas for a pre-honeymoon and I told her what I told you. She said that she owed Doss too, She would never have gotten me without his miraculous rescue. She picked up that day's winnings, tapped the bills into a tidy stack and just as I was thinking how many pairs of shoes can a woman want, she says, we're going to help Desmond. We took off that morning for Rising Fawn. She drove a lot of the way, and she has a heavy foot. We got to Rising Fawn easily enough but it took some asking around to find Desmond. People were protective. Else turned on the charm. She was well dressed to Vegas standards, and let her hair go a little too blond last time she had it done but she got us to Desmond's house.

I was having second thoughts, not about the money but Desmond was a southern man, he was proud, and might be hurt or offended at the offer of what looked like charity. I told Else of my misgivings as we pulled into the driveway, beside the mailbox with the name, Doss, on it.

"You talk to him for a while. I'll talk to his wife."

Desmond and Dorothy came out of the small house, looked at us from the front porch, then came to greet us with warmth, their hands extended to take ours. I told Des I had been thinking about him. Else cut right to the chase. 

"We came here so Sean can atone for what he failed to do in the barracks during training. That made Dorothy stare. So Desmond had not told her that his fellow soldiers were a bunch of shits. Else picked up on that. "It 's been eating at him," she jerked her head toward me. "I'm asking you, I'm begging you to let him atone." 

At that moment I pressed the wad of bills into Des' hands. So gauche it made my skin crawl.

Desmond looked bewildered. His wife had more sense and clearly had a use for that money. She reached for it. She was too well brought up to count it in front of us. but she hefted the stack. It would help them out of some difficulty.

"This is very good, very kind," she said. 

Desmond grasped my hand. He'd lost weight. Even his hand felt thin.

Else embraced Dorothy. 

"No rules for this matter. Sean needs to forgive himself. I need him to forgive himself."

" I prayed,' Dorothy said but she did not say what she prayed for or why. 

She and Desmond were so civilized and gracious, that I stopped feeling awkward about handing them a wad of cash.. Else and I still go to Vegas and Reno. The nights I decide, this is for Desmond, I do very,very well. Something helps me so I can help Desmond. Doesn't hurt to have a photographic memory and a head for odds. We go back to Rising Fawn and drop off the winnings. 

I no longer suffer from those recurrent shameful memories of standing by idly watching three or four guys doing the officers' bidding, battering Doss, bloodying him, trying to make him think that we blundering humans do not deserve his help and love.


End file.
